Secklow Mound, North Row, Milton Keynes Central, Buckinghamshire.
Posted by: 
greysman
N 52° 02.668 W 000° 45.608
30U E 653606 N 5768351
Secklow Mound was the meeting place of the elders of the Secklow Hundred.
Waymark Code: WMN1BW
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/06/2014
Views: 1
The Information Board at the north end of the Secklow Mound on North Row tells us:-
SECKLOW MOUND
In Saxon times the amount of land
required to support one family group was called a Hide. The Hide
became the main land unit for taxation purposes. Later hides
were grouped together into Hundreds (usually one hundred Hides) and
the "Hundred" became the basis of social organisation. Every
hundred had its own local government. The elders, one from each hide,
were entitled to gather together outdoors at a special meeting
place. They met monthly to discuss land management, to make
sure that public justice was done and to collect taxes
that were due to the local Lord and the King.
The local Hundred was called Secklow
Hundred and its shape was not unlike that so a
of the present new city of Milton Keynes. out more
The exact site of the Secklow
Meeting Mound was traditionally The construction of the city centre
thought to be on Bradwell Common threatened to destroy the site,
at a part called Secklow Corner. dig was arranged to find
Research in the early 1970s about the mound. Fragments of
located an eighteenth century pottery that were found, indicated
description of the mound as "an that it was probably purpose-built as
hillock at the end of Bradwell a Hundred meeting place. In 1978,
Field leading into Linford the mound was reconstructed to its
Grounds" and subsequently the present form and thus preserved as
mound was rediscovered as an Ancient Monument within Milton
"Selly Hill" on a map dated 1641. Keynes. The location of the mound
Field work and trial excavation led within the City Centre and adjacent
to the precise location of the mound. to the Milton Keynes Borough
It was originally alongside Common Council offices is an interesting
Lane, at the point where several old example of the continuity of local
rights of way and the parish government over the last thousand
boundaries of Bradwell, Great Linford years.
and Little Woolstone met.
The information board from which this has been taken is in severe need of a make-over, there are maps and pictures which are so faded as to be unintelligable.
At the south end of the mound is a more recent plaque made of stainless steel and set into a marble surround. It tells us:-
SECKLOW HUNDRED
MEETING MOUND
The hundred was the Anglo-Saxon unit of local
government, responsible for the administration
of jstice and the levying of taxes. In Buckingham-
shire, they were probably introduced in the early
tenth century.
Hundreds always met in the open air, usually at
a place on a boundary between two or more
parishes and remote from settlement. Ther was
often a mound to mark the meeting place and,
presumably, provide a dias for the meeting itself.
Secklow hundred was amalgamated with two
others in the fourteenth century to form the Newport
Hundred which met initially in Gayhurst parish
and then in Newport Pagnell itself. The site of the Map of Secklow Hundred Area
Secklow meeting mound was lost and the mound and Milton Keynes Designated Area
itself destroyed. It was re-discovered in 1976 by
the Archaeology Unit of the Milton Keynes Devel-
opment Corporation and excavated in 1977 and
1978. The present mound and ditch are a recon-
srtuction on the same site of the mound.
Fifty yards to the west are the new offices of the
Borough of Milton Keynes, the direct successor
to Secklow Hundred returned to almost the same
site after a gap of six hundred years.